If someone waves to you in the next week or so and you have no idea who it is, don’t worry about trying to place them.  

“Maybe it’s Gillian from curling?”

No. It’s probably me.

I’m training for the summer season and I need to do as much waving as I can before it starts. It would be very embarrassing not to be loose and ready.

The stiff British royalty wave really only works for Queen Elizabeth.

Believe me, I have no choice in this matter. I have to wave. I’ll be on the water.

There is a fraternity amongst water folk — be they on boats, on docks, or simply swimming and sitting lakeside. If you see one another, you wave.

Before dating Gord, I had only seen this phenomenon in the movies, when they showed cruise ships departing from the harbour.

 The decks would be lined with people waving to the crowd on the dock and throwing streamers. It all seemed rather festive.

However this grand-scale vision did not prepare me for my eventual enrolment into the wavers club.

The first time I visited Gord’s family cottage he took me for a ride on the boat. We passed another boat and Gord waved in greeting.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” he answered.

We passed a variety of other boats and Gord greeted each with a wave, as did they in return.

After the fifth boat I stopped asking whether or not he knew the occupants. Gord explained that waving hello to other boaters was just a friendly tradition.

When the next boat passed alongside of us, I gave it a great big two-handed wave and yelled across “Hey! Hi! How’s it going! Too bad we don’t have any streamers to throw!” The couple onboard gave me an odd look as they waved and motored on.

Gord smiled at me. “We’re not usually that exuberant about it.”

“Oh well,” I said “They’re strangers.”

Gord smiled again. “That was my aunt and uncle. They own the cottage next door.”

I have practiced my quietly controlled, but still friendly, wave technique ever since and vary it for only two reasons:

First, on the rare occasions that I have ventured to drive a jet ski I have discovered that not waving and therefore seeming a little aloof is far preferable to letting go of one side of the steering handle and subsequently doing a face plant into the water.

Secondly, when people have jet skied or boated inland too close to where my family is swimming I have given nothing in greeting but a ferocious glare and fist shaking.

In fact, just last year I was out in the water with two of my three children when a boat approached us too closely for my liking.

I contemplated the fist shaking but instead gave their boat the full force of the glare and yelled “Watch out before you hit someone!”

The boat passed beside us as I looked up to glare one more time in future warning.

Gord’s aunt and uncle waved.